Blog Hits 100!

It's kind of like celebrating a birthday. The blog has hit 100 messages,
this being the 100th. It's time for me to do some reflection on this
blog and it's purpose...

As I said when I started this blog back in Oct 2004, it was an
experiment. I told you that I was not a "blogging kind of guy" because I
have too much to do, like designing the next version of REBOL. I said
"talk is cheap".

Now, after 100 blogs, I know better. I've transformed from the "quiet"
type of person into someone who much better understands that good
leadership involves more than just taking action, it requires good
communication too. (In fact, if I were a politician, I would say that
talking is more important than taking action, right?)

As I said in my first blog message, one of my main concerns was the time
it might take to write up a new blog each day. Of course, my new blog.r
script (published in the REBOL.org library)
has helped a lot with that. Now I'm always just one click away from
being able to post a message, and I no longer need to spend any time
managing the blog archive itself. It even backs itself up automatically.

I was also wondering how many people would actually read the blog...
would I be wasting my time? To answer that question, I recently added a
hit counter to the main blog page. Reviewing that now, it looks like I
get about 500 visitors a day, and I think that's probably enough to
warrant the blogging effort. In fact, some of you read it so often that
you are now requesting an RSS news feed for it, and I hope to be adding that
feature to the blog this month.

I also asked you for feedback about the blog and about the content of
its messages. I've been getting plenty of feedback, so that is good too.

It is actually kind of funny the depth of the transformation this blog
has had on me. I was recently telling a friend how much I dislike
certain websites. I said that every good website needs at least two
things in addition to their main pages: 1) they need a good method of
feedback, and 2) they need a good news page so you can tell that they
are really alive behind the HTML front end. I realize now to what
degree we (RT)
made these mistakes for several years. I know we can still do a lot
better, but I think the blog has helped a lot.

In conclusion, with regard to the blog... I think the grand blogging
experiment has now advanced to become an essential feature of this
website. So, it looks like I'll keep going. It sounds to me like that
will be ok with you too. Onward.